Someone should point out to Bob that the laws they are using pre-date the Patriot Act (at that, the FISA regulations under the Patriot Act actually are supposed to prevent this).
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) is a United States wiretapping law passed in 1994, during the presidency of Bill Clinton (Pub. L. No. 103-414, 108 Stat. 4279, codified at 47 USC 1001-1010).
CALEA's purpose is to enhance the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance by requiring that telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment modify and design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure that they have built-in surveillance capabilities, allowing federal agencies to monitor all telephone, broadband internet, and VoIP traffic in real-time.
And CALEA is implemented as a "door" or hardware enabled access to signaling (SS7) gateways--these gateways are the connection nodes or "intelligence" that provide the central switching or routing between telecommunications networks
(voice and IP=data). Been around for decades.